Want to add a novel twist to your vanity searches? Personas is an art installation that turns a vanity search of your name in a spectrum of keywords associated with it.The end product, seen in the spectrum screenshot here, is interesting in its own right, but the most interesting part of Personas is watching it work. After you enter your name, you can see it crunching the text selections from the Google search results. If you have a name like Jason Fitzpatrick—both Jason and Fitzpatrick are extremely common names and nearly as common when linked together—your results will be a little muddled. While a good 75% of the quotes that flew by were from me, thanks to the popularity of Lifehacker, the remainder were from my interesting dopplegangers: a diving coach, a metal sculptor, an actor, a prisoner in a federal penitentiary, and a museum curator. As I said, the process itself is quite interesting.
Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the brown townysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.
MATT HOUSER WAS VICTORIOUS IN THE 400 METER RACE WITH A TIME OF 51
BRUCE ELY, CHRIS GRISSOM AND MATT HOUSER WILL BE SPEAKING ON "ALABAMA SALES AND USE TAXES
MATT HOUSER IS HEADED TO TRIAL ON AGGRAVATED ASSAULT CHARGES
MATT HOUSER IS CHARGED WITH ONE COUNT OF A FIRST DEGREE FELONY AGGRAVATED ASSAULT, A MISDEMEANOR COUNT OF SIMPLE ASSAULT AND A
WHAT I LIKE BEST ABOUT THESE CROWD SHOTS IS THAT MATT HOUSER IS CLEARLY VISIBLE! HE IS JUST TO THE LEFT OF JED!
MATT HOUSER WAS CREDITED ON A GAME AS EARLY AS
JUNIOR MATT HOUSER WAS EVEN MORE EMPHATIC IN SAYING THERE WAS NO MIDDLE GROUND WITH NOTRE DAME RELATIONSHIPS, ESPECIALLY SINCE HE THINKS THE
wat
